"I" Essay 1 Draft 1

The summer of 2007 was like most other summers, I assume. People worked hard, went to the beach, and made new friends. I wouldn’t know though, because I was living in another world. The mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico had been my home for the last seven months while I studied at a bible school. Having decided to stay on with the ministry, I was required to complete a four month internship living with a host family. I needed to master the language before my apprenticeship began in September. During the school year, I hadn’t had much time for regular language study. Thus, as of April when I began my internship, I only spoke Spanish well enough to have simple conversations.

Email Update Oaxaca              

Sunday, March 4, 2007 3:51 PM

As far as my host family goes, it’s settled that I'm staying with my friend Cesia. She's 20, my best friend here other than [others from the ministry]. We always have a ton of fun (we get a bit crazy). Her dad is a pastor of a small church down the road from us. I spent the night there on Friday. I really can't wait to till I live there. So encouraging. I know I'm going to learn a ton of Spanish & culture. I learned just in that night how to cook a bunch of stuff, and a lot of Spanish & cultural stuff. They've been living in Tlaxiaco for a while, so they are more set in the 'town' culture than the 'village' culture, which is fine. It’s good because I feel really comfortable speaking Spanish with them.

I was instructed by my supervisor to develop a plan for myself that involved the LAMP method. Language Acquisition Made Practical focuses on learning language through social situations. I was supposed to make 20-30 contacts with which I would visit each day and recite a memorized monologue to. A natural introvert, this idea terrified me. I had only survived the last seven months by cowering behind my friends. Although I spent several hours a week surrounded by Spanish conversation, I was convinced of my inability, and thus stayed silent.

Cesia became my friend because I didn’t need to talk with her. We got along very well because of our similar youthful spirits. We would watch movies and play games. We would run and laugh and joke. But we would never talk.

I moved in during the first week of April. Cesia and I cleared some things away, swept down the dirt floors, and somehow fit my borrowed cot along the wall opposite her bed. Separated by a curtain was the other part of the room, which housed her younger brother Hidai. The house was structured like a log cabin, with no insulation to keep the night cold from coming through the cracks.

I joined Cesia in her daily tasks each morning. We swept, prepared breakfast, and straightened up around the home. Cesia had an adopted younger sister named Berenice, who was two and a half. Bere (pronounced like the English “berry”) was born with a cleft palate, which, even after reparative surgery, caused her trouble in speaking. So twice a week we brought her down to the special education school in town for speech therapy. I like to say that Bere and I learned Spanish together that summer.

In the evenings I lived a peaceful life from the mountainside. I learned how to cook and make tortillas by hand. Cesia and I would occasionally climb the mountain behind the house to a higher plane and collect pine cones, which make excellent kindling. (We cooked over a fire, naturally). Later, I’d let the chickens out to graze and watch them from a large rock overlooking the valley at sunset.

Re: Hello

Saturday, May 5, 2007 11:32 AM

Yesterday I was in [Cesia’s] house a lot. I've been helping out, they work a lot. It’s been hard keeping my priorities straight. Spanish study? Relationships in town? Relationships & work in the house? God time? For at least this month I'm going to help out around Cesia's house & focus on God more than other stuff. Being at home gets me as much or more Spanish as being in town.

It was terrible, it was awful. Small & fluffy & white, snapping at my heels. I tried to run but it chased me up the street, Cesia tried to beat it back with a stick- but it had no fear! We only but escaped with our lives from the terrible, killer, watch- ........duck.  (!!??)

For the first month or so I spent a lot of time at home. Cesia occasionally worked odd jobs that I tagged along on. Also, I had to find a good balance of helping out enough so that, culturally, I would not be seen as a freeloader. I chose to err on the side of caution since my Spanish level did not allow me to ask about this complicated topic.

Gradually, however, I transitioned to a more Spanish-centered schedule. Each day after the morning chores, I would walk a mile through the corn fields to the highway. From there I’d catch a 40 cent taxi ride into town. Tlaxiaco is a beautiful place. The smell of street food fills the air. People pass each other tightly on crowded streets. Stands sell every possible good: vegetables, clothes, bowls, thread. American cities look gray in comparison; Mexico is decorated, unabashedly, in rich colors: the buildings, clothing, plastic chairs, and even tarps strung over the stands to provide shade. Eventually I memorized the maze of tiny alleys and got used to the constant stares and catcalls of “Gringa! Guerrita!” (little white girl)

Que ta? (What’s up?)

Monday, June 11, 2007 12:13 PM

I need you to come back so I can show off my Spanish. (just kidding) But God has been really good in blessing me in that. The main thing that changed is more my confidence level with talking. I’m learning a ton. I’ve been reading my Bible out loud in Spanish every day. Plus the songs at Cesia’s church are getting into my head. I know a bunch of them now. I can hear the present subjunctive now & am using it. I want to learn so I can talk to people. I love them.

Eventually I started to meet new people. I did this more out of fear of my supervisor than anything else. I would spend four to six hours in town every day, visiting, running errands, and walking around. Thankfully it was easy to make friends in a town with only a handful of Americans. We were an anomaly, heartily welcomed.

Sandra was one of the first people I began spending time with. She ran a Pasteleria (cake shop) with her husband near the town square. Coming from a well- known and wealthy family in Tlaxiaco, their store had many regular customers. These people often liked to talk with me to find out who I was and why I lived there. Sandra was patient with my lack of Spanish and comfortable with “companionable silence.”

I was looking for breakfast one morning when I met Eustolia, a local vendor. Her stand had all the breakfast staples: quesadillas, taquitos, and empanadas. Eustolia took my Spanish stumblings in stride, although I have to admit that a lot of our conversations were strained. Often, I would just sit and listen to her talk to other customers or friends who passed by. I think she appreciated the attention I attracted, although she never really understood why I had so much free time for visiting.

Graciela offered to help teach me Spanish if I taught her English. We didn’t spend much of our time together studying, to be honest. I met all of her family members and even went to school with her once (we are the same age). Unfortunately, I lost contact with her after the summer. It took awhile to discover that she’d followed the cultural trend of getting pregnant at a young age. With virtually no future prospects (a situation that most Oaxacan youth face) she had agreed to move in with her boyfriend’s family to cook and clean for them in exchange for a place to live and raise her daughter.

Re: How are you?

Wednesday, July 11, 2007 2:06 PM

There are rumors flying around the [ministry] base now about my Spanish. I’m not trying to show off, but I want to praise God for it, because He has given me grace. Somewhere in the last 4 months I went from silent to easily conversational, and I’m really blessed in my accent. I’m learning the subjunctives now, which are going fairly easily. The problems only appear when talking about something really serious, important, or confusing. Then I can’t keep up. But most of anything else I can handle now.

I never planned what to talk about with my friends. Talking was a byproduct of our friendship. It was rare that I used a dictionary to look up a word. The mesa was what we ate at. The ropa was what we dressed Berenice in. The jabón was what I washed dishes with. If I didn’t know something, I simply talked around it. Communication, not correctness, was my goal.

Communication is something much deeper than language. It is the interaction between souls. It is meaning transferred from one person to another. When I focused on relationships, my language ability became a secondary concern. As long as my message was understood, I felt content with the communication. Of course, there were many times when I did not get my exact meaning across. The frustration of this drove me to listen harder, to study harder, and to speak more clearly.

That summer, I didn’t take any Spanish classes. It was two months before I even developed a pattern for how and when to practice. Actually, I think that a plan would have made me stressed, like there was a certain level at which I needed to produce.

There are dozens of methods for learning language. Different things will work better for different people. One crucial element of learning a language is to be familiar with one’s personal learning style. Another major element is discipline. Rare is the person who is self-disciplined enough to overcome all of the embarrassment, confusion, headaches, and lack of time that comes with language learning. It is better to be in a situation where you are forced to learn, than to claim that you will teach yourself a language “when I have time.” Finally, personal interest is absolutely essential. Language learning is simply too difficult for the faint of heart but with a deep and personal desire to learn, you can overcome all barriers, have patience for all the problems, and make time where seemingly none exists. The last suggestion I can give is to pray and pray a lot.

Spanish Report—Week of June 2^nd to 10^th

Monday, June 11, 2007 11:42 AM

So I’ve actually been just using my own system. I only made a couple contacts, but I think that’s working better for me. I’m more relational anyways; I’d rather have a couple close friends than lots of acquaintances. But don’t worry; I’m speaking with Mexicans all day, every day. I spent several hours this week in town, and an hour or so every afternoon doing sit-down study. I’m learning a lot of words and grammar through context, I can’t even think of what they all mean in English. Not sure, but whatever I’m doing is working, so I’m gonna stick with it.